VOA常速英语:At-Home Test Kits: New Tools to Close the COVID-19 Testing Gap

Though covid-19 vaccines are on the way,
虽然新冠肺炎疫苗即将上市，
health experts are cautioning that the need for frequent covet 19 testing will be with us for a long time.
但健康专家警告说，我们很长一段时间都需要进行频繁的检测。
Adequately testing the US population has been a persistent challenge.
对美国民众进行充分的测试一直是一项持久的挑战。
Now there is hope for a new approach: self-testing at home.
现在有希望采取一种新的办法：在家做自我测试。
Rapid sensitive specific home testing even one that you might not even need a prescription for,
快速敏感的特定家庭测试不需要处方，
so that people can have within their own power to know.
这样人们就可以在自己的能力范围内知道。
Recent technological advances suggest that widespread home testing is within reach.
最近的技术进步表明，广泛的家庭测试是可以实现的。
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first at-home covid-19 test,
美国食品药品监督管理局已经批准了第一次在国内进行新冠肺炎测试，
that generates results in less than an hour.
不到一个小时就能产生结果。
Dr. John Chou led clinical studies of the test.
约翰?周博士负责这项试验的临床研究。
It is essentially a lab test at home:
它本质上是一种家庭实验室测试：
on par or at least close to par as what we consider the gold standard pcr testing.
这至少很接近我们认为的黄金标准试剂盒测试。
There are enzymes in these solutions,
这些溶液中有酶，
so that when the sample is placed it amplifies the amount of genetic material thats there.
所以当样本被放置时，它放大了那里的遗传物质的数量。
The detector can detect it and then within 30 minutes a result will come out.
探测器可以探测到它，然后在30分钟内，结果就会出来。
How much nicer would it be for it to be able to be done at home and keep people isolated.
如果能在家里做而且能把人们隔离起来，那该多好啊。
Chou says the tests will also provide an advantage when used in clinics.
周说，这种测试在诊所使用时也会有优势。
When we can get results that are lab quality very quickly,
当我们很快得到实验室质量的结果时，
we can help make decisions very quickly.
我们可以非常迅速地帮助做出决定。
The company plans widespread distribution of the test in the US this spring.
该公司计划春天在美国广泛推广这种测试。
Another breakthrough in testing comes from artificial intelligence.
测试方面的另一个突破来自人工智能。
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma found that the cough of a person infected with covid-19,
俄克拉荷马大学的研究人员发现，感染新冠肺炎的人咳嗽
has a unique sound signature that can be detected using AI,
有着可以被人工智能探测到的独特声音特征，
even in people with no discernible symptoms.
即使在没有明显症状的人身上。
Then we built on that initial finding to try to create an app.
然后我们在最初的发现基础上尝试创建一款APP。
The app first had to learn to isolate a cough sound from all the background noise.
该APP首先必须从所有背景噪音中分离出咳嗽声。
About 50,000 different types of coughs were used to train it,
大约有5万种不同类型的咳嗽被用来练习，
and then almost same number of non-cough sounds were used.
然后使用了几乎相同数量的非咳嗽音。
Then the app was fine tuned using the coughs of covid-19 patients.
然后根据新冠肺炎患者的咳嗽进行微调。
Similar research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
麻省理工学院的类似研究，
shows AI can detect a covid-19 cough with nearly 100 percent accuracy.
显示人工智能检测新冠肺炎患者咳嗽的准确率接近100%。
Industry groups around the world have joined the race to bring cough detecting apps to the public.
世界各地的行业组织都加入了将咳嗽检测应用程序推向公众的竞赛。
The beauty of this is that it is low cost and it is repeatable,
它的优点是它成本低，可重复使用，
and it can be done every day and it can be done several times a day.
每天都可以这样做，一天可以做好几次。
In 2021 testing for covid-19 may become just another part of our daily routines.
在2021年，新冠肺炎测试可能只是我们日常生活的另一部分。
Matt Dibble for VOA news San Francisco
VOA新闻，马特·迪布尔旧金山报道